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Spaces of History and the Place of Odessa

The Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University hosts a lecture by Tanya Richardson, titled:

"SPACES OF HISTORY AND THE PLACE OF ODESSA"

Ukraine’s southern port city of Odessa is considered unique by residents and non-residents alike as Russian/cosmopolitan but not Ukrainian. This talk will trace how claims about the city's identity and location have been expressed in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods through the narration of history. Weaving together accounts of the Odessa Literature Museum, a Jewish history group and a Ukrainian collector, the talk aims to illuminate how Odessa's cosmopolitan qualities have operated at different times to mark the city as distinct within the historical and geographical imaginaries of its encompassing state.

Tanya Richardson received her doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at The Harriman Institute at Columbia University. Her most recent publication “Walking Streets, Talking History: The Making of Odessa” appeared in Ethnology in winter 2005.

Yuri Shevchuk, Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages, apepared on the English broadcast division of Hromadske Radio (Ukraine’s Public Radio) to discuss contemporary Ukrainian filmmaking. You can read the transcript and listen to the show here.

Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University for a presentation by Volodymyr Kulyk, Head Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Please join the Ukrainian Studies Program at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University for a presentation by Sergei Zhuk, Professor of Russian and Eastern European History at Ball State University, of his book Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists (I.B. Tauris, 2018).

The Harriman Institute and the Russian American Cultural Center (RACC) present an exhibition curated by Regina Khidekel. Many Russian émigré artists have invigorated the New York art scene over the past three decades. The '90s was a particularly vibrant decade for integration and the search for relevance in the realm of contemporary art and critical discourse, areas that had been lacking in Russia during the post-Soviet transition. This exhibition aims to revitalize the history of Russian artists in New York during the 1990s and early aughts.